


only half a bard

by monstermash



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - The Witcher Fusion, M/M, Witcher!Bucky, Witcher!Natasha, Witcher!Steve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:28:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22301098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash
Summary: Natalia steps out from the shadows, a smirk dancing in her jade green eyes as she greets him."Wolf.""Cat," he returns without looking up.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Lucky, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> guess who watched the first couple of episodes of the Witcher and immediately thought "hey this would be a cool au for winterhawk"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first time writing these characters, hope they turned out alright. also, ngl, every time i see _'Child Surprise'_ i read it in the same voice as _'Shia Suprise!'_

There's a sickening _crack_ as he plunges his sword through the creature's neck, straight through its spine.

Breathing heavily, Bucky's shoulders sag in relief when its sunken eyes stop rolling wildly in their sockets, now glazed over and staring out at nothing and the glow of his medallion fades. A pack of Rotfiends, a few more than the town elder had led him to believe when he had accepted the job. They probably hadn't thought much of him, a one-armed Witcher, which explains why when the topic of payment came up, they had danced around it.

Really, he should be used to the skepticism of how useful he is by now, but...

A frustrated sigh escapes him.

Humans are humans, there's no changing them, and he should stop expecting better of them. Either they hate him for being a Witcher, or they underestimate him for missing a limb.

Or...

Or on the rare occasion, they recognize him. Look at him with loathing, repulsed at the fact that the _'Fist of Hyrda'_ still lives.

(Not for lack of trying. Not that any of them care about what actually happened. Not that he can really blame them for that.)

Another sigh escapes him, less frustrated, more exhausted from the heavy weight of the past pressing down on his shoulders, as he sets about beheading the Rotfiends and burning their bodies before scooping the heads into the sacks he left hanging by the graveyard's gate.

\---

The road is more his home than anywhere else, more than Kaer Morhen even.

Though, he supposes, it is nice to sleep in an actual bed every once in a while. When he can, when he's lucky enough to come across a town that doesn't chafe at his presence.

That had not been the case this time. The town elder had been shocked by his return and reluctant to part with the coin promised to Bucky. If it hadn't been for the Rotfiend heads, Bucky doesn't think they would've paid him at all.

So here he sits, a ways from the road by a fire and cleaning his weapons and with Alpine grazing a few yards away.

Silence hangs in the air, but he hears her approach - footsteps intentionally heavy - before he sees her.

Natalia steps out from the shadows, a smirk dancing in her jade green eyes as she greets him.

"Wolf."

"Cat," he returns without looking up.

"If I didn't know better, I'd think you were a Bear." In his peripheries, he can see her head tilt ever so slightly as she continues to stare at him without blinking; a little game of hers, to see how long it takes for someone to crack under the pressure of her unnerving gaze. It never works on him. Usually. "But then again, you haven't the beard for it."

He lets out a huff of amusement at that. "Were I a Bear, there'd be a lot more blood spilled every time we meet."

"True enough," Natalia concedes, finally blinking. A comfortable quiet blankets them, content to let the fire crackle. There's something she wants and Bucky is more than fine waiting for her to bring it up; he hasn't seen in her in years, not since she took a step back from the public to look after her Child of Surprise, but he has no doubt that Natalia had continued to pull strings from behind the curtain. "How have you been?"

She asks like she already knows the answer. As far as Bucky knows, she probably does. There's always been something more to Natalia, other than being a Witcher, and Bucky has always suspected as much, even back when they were still students of their respective schools. The red haired Cat has a knack for knowing things she couldn't possibly know that suggests more than tricks of the trade.

"Fine. Paying work is still hard to come by," he admits, finally setting aside his sword. "You?"

"Well, considering there's one less ass on Nilfgaard's throne, I'm doing quite well."

Bucky's eyebrows shoot up at her words.

"I take it you had a reason?" Sure, Natalia is a Cat, but she tends to not go after royalty if she can avoid it. _Too messy,_ she had once told him, but to go after an Imperator? In the middle of a war? Well, when _isn't_ Nilfgaard at war, but still. Something had to have changed her tune about it.

The smile on her face is sharp, eyes hard as stone yet glinting like edge of a blade in firelight. "He stole someone of mine."

He hums in response and that thread of conversation drops. Curious, but Bucky won't push for details, not with the way Natalia is holding herself now. Stiff. Tense. Easy to miss tells unless one has known her a long time, when there's enough trust for her to _show_ her tells. Bucky racks his mind trying to remember who the most recent Imperator was. One of Imperator Odin's sons, the youngest, he thinks. There might have been a daughter as well, if he recalls correctly. At least one of them was exiled, that much Bucky remembers for certain.

"Are you going to winter at Kaer Morhen this year?"

The question comes so abruptly that Bucky is blindsided by it.

Swallowing thickly, Bucky feeds the fire when it starts to dim a bit. "I wasn't planning on it."

"Perhaps you should," she says, then answers the question he can't bring himself to ask. "Steve is still helping Lord Stark in Novigrad, so it's unlikely he'll make it to Kaer Morhen before the first snow."

"I'll think about it."

"That's all I ask." It really isn't, but Natalia is smiling fondly now, and Bucky doesn't have the heart to rob her of it with cruel words just because he can't stand the thought of being around the others, of being around Steve despite the long years of friendship.

(Despite the fact that Steve had spearheaded a campaign to free him from the tangled clutch of the Hyrda School. It was what came after that Bucky couldn't stand, the _looks,_ the ever dimming _hope_ because Bucky wasn't the _same_ anymore—)

Rising gracefully from her seat, Natalia bids him farewell then slips back into the shadows, air crackling as she goes but his medallion doesn't light up.

A mystery she was, and a mystery she'll always be.

\---

In the morning, after he's saddled Alpine, Bucky stands at a crossroads of sorts.

Does he take the road north to Kaedwen, to Kaer Morhen, or does he go any other direction, put as much distance between himself and the mostly ruined school as possible?

The cold isn't good for him, makes him ache where his left arm should be and drowns him in nightmares. He should go find work, there's always monsters in need of slaying, but there's a soul deep exhaustion at the thought of having to deal with anymore people who take one look at him and decide that he's incapable. Alpine shuffles irritably beneath him, ready to move on. With a quiet, resigned sigh, Bucky pats her neck before steering her north.

If he has to suffer this winter, he may as well suffer with people who can at least somewhat stand to be around him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao im so sorry, this is more build up, but Clint will finally show up next chapter, i swear
> 
> (i've also never seen Captain Marvel, so if Carol is ooc in her brief appearance, my bad, y'all.)

A shudder threatens to run through him when Kaer Morhen finally comes into view, just barely more than a speck on the horizon.

He shouldn't have listened to Natalia, doesn't know why he did because there's just been a bone deep _dread_ hanging off of him the whole trip and Bucky's foul mood has been agitating Alpine enough that she's been nipping at him here and there. Moody thing that she is. But then again, so is he.

Perhaps that's why she chose him, instead of the other way around.

"Sorry I've been a mess," Bucky apologizes as he swings down off her back; walking will take longer, draw this out, but hopefully this'll give him time to get his head on straight. "I promise you all the sugar cubes and apples the keep has, and then some."

Her ears pin back but she doesn't nip at him.

\---

There are no words to describe the ache that cracks him open to see the school the way that it is now.

A big hole in the eastern wall, the missing heavy wooden gates, and at least two towers have crumbled into heaps of stone and brick.

The wind still howls, but there's no voices carried on it. No sounds of steel clashing in the training yard nor the chattering of students, and there probably never will be again.

(The last time he had heard those sounds... it's a scab he doesn't like to pick at.)

Biting the inside of his cheek, Bucky pushes down the memories to somewhere behind his ribs and heads for the stables, Alpine trailing behind him.

\---

The stables aren't anywhere near as empty as he'd been hoping.

A familiar, but different blonde head pops up as soon as he enters.

"Thought you were dead," Carol says as she goes back to brushing down her own horse. The only Bear Bucky has ever met that's anywhere close to being talkative despite being the prickliest one of the bunch.

_("Being a complete recluse won't make things easier," she'd once said, a long time ago. "Besides, it'd disappoint my wife if I went complete mountain woman.")_

Before he can say anything to that, Carol continues speaking.

"Colonel will be glad to see you. Now he'll stop worrying about whether he should put your name on the Slab or not."

Bucky blinks.

"Putting my name on the _what."_

There's a long silence where they just stare blankly at each other. Well, until Alpine has had enough and butts her head against Bucky's back, impatient for the treats he had promised her on the road. Averting his gaze from Carol's, he finally leads Alpine to an empty stall.

"You really don't know?" Carol's voice almost echoes in here and Bucky can't look at her, stays focused on the task at hand instead.

"I don't," he admits, but he thinks he can make a pretty good guess. "Haven't been here for a while."

Silence falls over them again, and it's uncomfortable, at least on Bucky's end.

"It's out in the yard. One of Colonel's projects; when he's not working on restoring the keep or looking for Erskine's notes, he's working on the Slab."

Swallowing back the threat of rising bile, Bucky's movements slow to a stop. "I thought Erskine's work was lost."

A bitter scoff and a stall door closes.

"Apparently not. Guess he was the only mage with enough foresight to make a copy of the Trial, but not enough to tell anyone _where_ he fucking hid them."

Glancing out of his peripheries, he can see Carol pause just outside of Alpine's stall before leaving the stables.

"Go to the yard," Carol calls over her shoulder. "If you're still here tomorrow, you're hunting for dinner."

\---

Bucky goes to the yard; he isn't exactly thrilled about it, but it's better than wandering through the halls aimlessly.

A sting of heartache lances through him at the sight of what used to be patches of dirt, worn down from students practicing, has clearly long since become covered by grass once more. Just another small reminder of how far they've fallen, and will continue to fall.

Finding the older Witcher is simple enough; the graying hair stands out against the dark slab of granite that sits beside the willow on the far side of the yard. The Colonel is clearly carving something into the granite, but Bucky can't see what it is from this distance.

There's no immediate reaction at Bucky's approach, but he knows the Colonel knows he's here.

"Colonel."

"Barnes, what a surprise."

Bucky snorts at that. "I haven't been a Barnes in years."

"And I've never been a colonel," Philips replies in that dry way of his. From this close, Bucky can see the new wrinkles that have formed on the old Witcher's face; Philips was already well into middle age by the time Bucky and Steve became students of the school, and the years since haven't been terribly kind to any of them. "War belongs to men, not us."

A pause and then one gnarled hand gestures to the slab of granite in front of him, "Then again, with all this I may as well be."

Glancing at the granite, Bucky's heart just about stops as the dread comes rushing back in all at once.

Names.

Ones he recognizes and just as many that he doesn't.

"Are they..." his voice trails off, failing him, unable to form the rest of his question. But Philips knows anyway, lightly taps the middle left side.
    
    
    Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan. Gabe Jones. Jim Morita. Jacques Dernier. James Montgomery Falsworth.

Throat tight and eyes stinging, Bucky carefully reaches out, fingertips pressed against the sun warm granite.

He wants to ask.

He wants to ask because he wasn't _there_ that night, had only showed up days after with Steve to find smoking remains.

(And then in the aftermath, a few stragglers had snuck up on them and Bucky fell, and then Hydra had snatched him up.)

But the words won't come, caught somewhere between his trachea and his heart.

Instead, the trapped words rot and fester as Bucky and Philips stand there in silence.

\---

Bucky doesn't doesn't even make it to nightfall, the remaining walls of Kaer Morhen quickly becoming suffocating, claustrophobic.

It's going to be exhausting, having to deal with people after getting used to the idea of not having to for an entire season, and Natalia is going to be disappointed, but Bucky feels worse for disappointing Alpine.

"First town we come across that doesn't chase us out, I'll get you as many apples as I can buy," Bucky promises, patting her neck.


End file.
